Last week, Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) welterweight Alan Jouban made it clear that he was done fiddling around in his division. After taking a unanimous decision over the previously unbeaten Mike Perry, “Brahma” wanted to compete against elite competition.
Jouban was a recent guest on MMAFighting.com’s “The MMA Hour” to discuss why he isn’t thrilled with his place in the UFC rankings. He told Ariel Helwani that his big UFC on FOX debut didn’t yield the results he hoped:
“It didn’t do anything for me. I took the fight because I wanted to fight before the year’s end. I wanted to fight in Sacramento, there were a majority of reasons. Mike Perry was not one of em. I just wanted the fight on big FOX, which I hadn’t done yet at the time. I wanted to be on the main card, which I got. All these things were the factors into why I wanted to fight on that fight [card].”
Former UFC lightweight champion Rafael dos Anjos recently made the decision to move up to the 170-pound division. Jouban explained why he wants to welcome the former champion to welterweight.
“Ever since he announced moving up in weight, as soon as I saw it I just thought he’s a big enough name. He’s a number four [ranked] lightweight and other than that he’s a former champion. He’s a big name.”
“Brahma” and his manager reached out to dos Anjos’ manager to try to push the UFC to make the bout happen. While Jouban is willing to throw down, he’s not sure if “RDA” feels the same way.
“My management reached out to dos Anjos’ management. We said, ‘look man, all we have to do is both of us email the UFC and say we both want this fight, it’s done. Let’s do it, March 4, Vegas let’s do this.'”
“We had to kind of push them, we had to kind of sell it to them.”
